Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the accuracy of reports that the omicron variant of covid-19 causes mild disease.

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has not made a specific assessment on the accuracy of the reports that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 causes mild disease.

The UKHSA is in regular contact with counterparts in South Africa and continues to monitor the situation there closely.

For any given population, the apparent severity of infections with the Omicron variant will be influenced by a number of factors including that population’s immunity, its population structure (proportion of younger to older age groups), prevalence of predisposing health conditions and access to healthcare. As a result of inherent differences in those factors between the populations of South Africa and the United Kingdom (UK), the experience in South Africa cannot be directly extrapolated to the UK setting. As such, at the present time it is too early to state with certainty what the intrinsic severity of Omicron will be in the UK.